As the county supervisor, district attorney, mayor of Tijuana, and other members of the region’s political establishment entered Chula Vista’s city hall for the State of the City address Tuesday, Russ Hall and his small band of grassroots activists staged their resistance.

“Basically, we formed our group to oppose Measure A and point out that residents have an alternative,” Hall said.

Chula Vista residents are already taxed enough and even though politicians have promised the money will be spent on hiring more police officers and firefighters, tax revenues raised by the measure won’t be legally required to be spent on public safety, Hall added.

Tuesday’s press conference was No on A’s first public event. The group doesn’t have any money and is made up entirely of volunteers.

In contrast, “Yes on Measure A for Public Safety” has more than $110,000, mostly from developers who have business with the city and the local police and fire unions.

All four of Chula Vista’s city council members have hosted “Public Safety Staffing Crisis” forums that highlight the need to hire more officers and present Measure A as the solution. Mayor Mary Casillas Salas called the chronic under-staffing of the police and fire departments “one of the biggest problems facing our city.”

“I hope that the voters will agree that a half-cent sales tax increase is a small price to pay to ensure the safety of our families,” she said during the State of the City.

Hall is aware that his group of Davids are fighting the city’s Goliath. But he sees the amount of resources going into promoting Measure A as a sign.

“That tells me that they are pretty desperate to get this thing to pass,” he said.

To pass, Measure A needs more than 50 percent of the votes in June’s election. If it passes, the money will go toward the general fund, which is used to pay for various city services.

The city had the option of proposing a special tax, which would have required the money to be spent on a specific purpose like public safety, but that would’ve required two-thirds vote.

Hall says he would have supported a special tax but he does not have faith that the city will follow up on its promise to spend the money on public safety staffing, even with a citizen oversight committee tasked with auditing Measure A revenues.